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Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  Relative to historical norms, the market is not pricing any major change in cybersecurity.

  Their words

  But the crucial point is that, relative to the historical norm, the market is not really pricing ANYTHING big to change.

  Callum Williams on cybersecurity pricesmarginalrevolution.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  Intelligence and Polanyi knowledge are mostly complements with fairly limited substitutability in producing output.

  Their words

  In the model, intelligence and Polanyi knowledge combine to produce output. Substitutability is fairly limited. For instance, if you have problems of norms in your office, a mere dose of AI-drenched technocratic knowledge does not usually solve those problems. Sometimes it even can make those problems worse, by empowering rent-seekers further. Intelligence and Polanyi knowledge are not quite Leontief complements, but they are mostly complements.

  A simple model of AI-aided economic growthmarginalrevolution.com

Economist and Nobel laureate. Wrote a New York Times column for 25 years until December 2024 and now publishes several times a week on Substack.

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  Weaponizing economic choke points has become more acceptable as the United States and China do it, against earlier norms of the economic system.

  ChinaAmerica

  Their words

  nobody was willing to do it because it had been seen as kind of against the norms of the economic system. And as actors like the United States and China do this, it becomes more acceptable.

  paulkrugman.substack.com

Political scientist writing Drezner's World on international relations, American politics and the marketplace of ideas; author of The Ideas Industry.

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  Teaching that reflects political commitments is a legitimate part of intellectual diversity, not a violation of academic norms

  Their words

  There is nothing wrong with promoting perspectives that have political commitments; in fact, intellectual diversity requires this, because some viewpoints include political commitments.

  danieldrezner.substack.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

From one piece We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Decline 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  A model fitted only to trends in its own outcome cannot forecast anything, because it contains no variable anyone could change.

  Their words

  The demand for explanations of low fertility is entirely a demand for variables which will reduce these technical trends to near zero.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

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  Ruling out every measurable cause because none explains all the variation, and putting an unmeasured one in their place, is not an explanation.

  Their words

  He ruled out all the actual, measurable variables because they were an imperfect explanation, and instead offers a vague, diffuse variable, for which he has no measure, and which is not actually included in his model.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

Co-founder and CEO of Shopify; long-time Linux user and Omarchy contributor.

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  Customising an operating system by asking an agent replaces esoteric config syntax as the way customisation actually works.

  Their words

  Now you can have a quake style console in your operating system. Except with an infinitely patient agent to help you customize it instead of esoteric variable names and slash commands like in the 90s

  @tobi on Xx.com

Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, and co-founder and CEO of World Labs.

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  It would be dangerous for a few people from industry to set the rules for AI, because market forces are not societal norms.

  Their words

  What I would not like to see is one person or or a few people coming from industry and telling everybody what to do. I think that would be dangerous because market forces are different from uh societal norms and culture and heritage are different from uh education and ethics and and these are multistakeholder problems to solve together.

  youtube.com

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

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  Raising HDL cholesterol is not a treatment target, because every drug that raised it failed to reduce cardiovascular events.

  Their words

  These failures are a strong signal that HDL-C is not the variable we should be trying to manipulate.

  The trouble with “good cholesterol”peterattiamd.com

General partner at Benchmark Capital for over two decades; was the lead analyst on Amazon's IPO before moving into venture capital. Writes Above the Crowd on tech and marketplace economics.

From one piece Mental Models That Change How You Think | Bill Gurley 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Complex systems are multivariable and nonlinear, so they can behave one way for years and then switch when a single variable changes.

  Their words

  I would describe complex systems as multivariable nonlinear systems. And multivariable nonlinear systems are very hard to predict. They can behave one way for a long time and then one variable can switch and they can behave another way.

  youtube.com

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  Optimising a single metric is a trap, because the second-order consequences of the change only surface much later.

  Their words

  you got to be really conscious of the consequence and not get too deterministic about a single metric or a single variable and know what's important and what's on top.

  youtube.com

Software design writer and chief scientist at Thoughtworks; wrote Refactoring and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

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  The Venn diagram of developer experience and agent experience is a circle: well-modularised code and good tests help the agents exactly as they help the humans.

  Their words

  which is that the the Venn diagram of developer experience and agent experience is a circle. And the point here is that, you know, what we do that that's good for the agents is good for the humans and vice versa. I'm hearing a lot of feedback saying, "Yeah, actually, if you have well-modularized code, that actually makes it easy for the agents to work with."

  youtube.com

Astrophysicist and coffee researcher; author of The Physics of Filter Coffee and The Physics of Espresso, and writer of the Coffee ad Astra blog on brewing science and equipment.

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  Coffee bed depth, unlike bed width, significantly affects flavor in a way other brew variables cannot easily compensate for.

  Their words

  the depth of a coffee bed, contrary to the width of the coffee bed, is a variable that impacts the flavor of the coffee being brewed significantly, and in a way that you cannot easily compensate for by changing other brew variables.

  The Importance of Bed Depthcoffeeadastra.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

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  Who is in a school predicts its results better than anything about its teaching, its teachers or its methods.

  Their words

  Once again, the composition of the student body is always more powerful a predictor than any identifiable pedagogical, school, or teacher variable.

  There Are No Miracles in Educationfreddiedeboer.substack.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

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  When you start a business, you get to make all the rules and decide how things should work without following norms.

  Their words

  So the idea is when you start a business, you get to make all the rules now. You can, like in this little part of the world, you get to decide how things should work. You don't have to follow norms.

  sive.rs

Founder and CEO of Epic Games, creator of the Unreal Engine and of Fortnite.

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  Humans together in a shared world are a naturally empathetic medium, while typing messages at each other is a self-reinforcing negative dynamic.

  Their words

  I think the lesson from all of that is that humans talking to humans and being together in the real world or a virtual world, is a naturally empathetic medium, which naturally leads to bonding, and though conflict sometimes occurs, it's just generally so much more promoting of our social norms and good interactions between people and positivity promoting.

  youtube.com

Historian at Stanford and the Hoover Institution; wrote Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative and Goddess of the Market, on Ayn Rand.

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  The circle around Ayn Rand became totally conformist because its members held that rationality was the only way to decide anything and that being rational meant agreeing with her.

  Their words

  Over time, they all come to share Ayn Rand's views and opinions on everything, from music to art, to clothes. She gets a dining room table and a bunch of them get the same dining room table, and it becomes incredibly conformist, because they've all believed they're acting rationally. And they believe that to act rationally is to agree with Ayn Rand and they believe there's no other way to make decisions than rationality. To disagree with her is to be irrational.

  youtube.com

President of the French Republic since 2017.

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  Europe cannot keep the world's strictest environmental and social rules, invest less than its competitors and run a more naive trade policy, and still expect to create jobs.

  Europe

  Their words

  We cannot sustain the most stringent environmental and social norms, invest less than our competitors, have a more naive trade policy than them and think that we will continue to generate jobs. This no longer holds together.

  elysee.fr

Programmer known online as technomancy; author of Leiningen, the Clojure build tool, and a maintainer of the Fennel programming language.

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  Lua functions have no true names, since only the variable or field holding them does, making every Lua function effectively anonymous.

  Their words

  In a subtle but very real sense, every Lua function is an anonymous function.

  in which an escape route is discoveredtechnomancy.us

Political scientist at the University of Chicago and the leading exponent of offensive realism; wrote The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

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  Economic interdependence does not prevent war, because survival always trumps prosperity.

  Their words

  The point is that economic interdependence at its root has prosperity as the core variable. In the realest story, the core variable is survival, and survival always trumps prosperity.

  youtube.com

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

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  A persistently low safe interest rate signals that capital is not very productive at the margin, an underlying economic problem rather than a policy variable.

  interest rates

  Their words

  A low r is actually a signal that something is wrong with the economy: In effect, if we think of the safe rate as the risk-adjusted rate of return on capital, the low safe rate is sending the signal that, risk adjusted, the return on capital is low.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu

Economist at George Mason University. Writes Overcoming Bias on prediction markets, signalling and the far future, and wrote The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain.

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  Falling fertility is transmitted by the values that mass media spread, not by how rich any individual is.

  Their words

  It seems to be correlated strongly with societal (not individual) wealth, and mediated by norms transmitted via mass media.

  The Insular Fertile Futureovercomingbias.com

Cryptographer; teaches cryptography at Johns Hopkins and writes A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering.

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  Content tracing works by turning every user into a cooperating witness, whether or not they want to cooperate with the police.

  Their words

  This brings us to the central challenge of all content tracing proposals so far: to make tracing possible, a tracing system needs to turn every WhatsApp user (including the originator) into a cooperative green circle — regardless of whether users actually want to cooperate with police.

  Thinking about “traceability”blog.cryptographyengineering.com